The Postman Always Rings Twice Read Online Free PDF

joke. But I swear, I'm really better than this. I can't seem to get going. How you say we put $1 on it, just to make it lively?"
          "Oh well. I can't lose much at a dollar."
          We made it $1 a game, and I let him take four or five, maybe more. I shot like I was pretty nervous, and in between shots I would wipe off the palm of my hand with a handkerchief, like I must be sweating.
          "Well, it looks like I'm not doing so good. How about making it $5, so I can get my money back, and then we'll go have a drink?"
          "Oh well. It's just a friendly game, and I don't want your money. Sure. We'll make it $5, and then we'll quit."
          I let him take four or five more, and from the way I was acting, you would have thought I had heart failure and a couple more things besides. I was plenty blue around the gills.
          "Look. I got sense enough to know when I'm out of my class all right, but let's make it $25, so I can break even, and then we'll go have that drink."
          "That's pretty high for me."
          "What the hell? You're playing on my money, aren't you?"
          "Oh well. All right. Make it $25."
          Then was when I really started to shoot. I made shots that Hoppe couldn't make. I banked them in from three cushions, I made billiard shots, I had my english working so the ball just floated around the table, I even called a jump shot and made it. He never made a shot that Blind Tom the Sightless Piano Player couldn't have made. He miscued, he got himself all tangled up on position, he scratched, he put the one ball in the wrong pocket, he never even called a bank shot. And when I walked out of there, he had my $250 and a $3 watch that I had bought to keep track of when Cora might be driving in to the market. Oh, I was good all right. The only trouble was I wasn't quite good enough.
     
          "Hey, Frank!"
          It was the Greek, running across the street at me before I had really got out the door.
          "Well Frank, you old son a gun, where you been, put her there, why you run away from me just a time I hurt my head I need you most?"
          We shook hands. He still had a bandage around his head and a funny look in his eyes, but he was all dressed up in a new suit, and had a black hat cocked over on the side of his head, and a purple necktie, and brown shoes, and his gold watch chain looped across his vest, and a big cigar in his hand.
          "Well, Nick! How you feeling, boy?"
          "Me, I feel fine, couldn't feel better if was right out a the can, but why you run out on me? I sore as hell at you, you old son a gun."
          "Well, you know me, Nick. I stay put a while, and then I got to ramble."
          "You pick one hell of a time to ramble. What you do, hey? Come on, you don't do nothing, you old son a gun, I know you, come on over while I buy'm steaks I tell you all about it."
          "You alone?"
          "Don't talk so dumb, who the hell you think keep a place open now you run out on me, hey? Sure I'm alone. Me a Cora never get to go out together now, one go, other have to stay."
          "Well then, let's walk over."
          It took him an hour to buy the steaks, he was so busy telling me how his skull was fractured, how the docs never saw a fracture like it, what a hell of a time he's had with his help, how he's had two guys since I left and he fired one the day after he hired him, and the other one skipped after three days and took the inside of the cash register with him, and how he'd give anything to have me back.
          "Frank, I tell you what. We go to Santa Barbara tomorrow, me a Cora. Hell boy, we got to step out a little, hey? We go see a fiesta there, and you come with us. You like that, Frank? You come with us, we talk about you come back a work for me. You like a fiesta a Santa Barbara?"
          "Well, I hear it's good."
          "Is a girls, is a music, is a dance in streets,